Budget Smart, Invest Wise

I spoke with my sister who just recently graduated with student loan debt. She asked me, “How do I start paying back my loans?” I told her, I don’t know.

If you have recently graduated from college then chance are you have student loans to pay back. There is student loan exiting counselling you must go through and then it seems like you’re all finished.

This is exactly what I did. After I graduated I went through loan counselling sometime during the late summer of 2012. And then… Nothing. I don’t even believe I received an email until almost six months later when it was time to start paying back my loans. My grace period was coming to an end.

If you take out a student loan through your college or university you will most likely have a grace period of six months. This is so you can have time to “Get your finances in order”. I assume these loan company figure if you were this easy to get into debt it was the least they could do.

The bad part about this “Grace Period” is that interest is accruing during the six months you aren’t paying back your loans. The loan companies try their best to hide this from you and make it as difficult as possible to figure out how to pay back your loans before the period is over.